OST and PD (Positive Deviance)

Thu Nov 11 06:41:56 PST 2010

Alan --I can't say that I have ever used Positive Deviance (defined as my
friends Henri and Lisa might) - but being a positive character of a deviant
sort living in a self organizing world (there is no other) - I simply can't
imagine the circumstances where I would NOT be using PD. But don't tell a
soul. Anybody with PD has got to be suspect!

I joke - but seriously. As I understand it PD is a brilliant application of
a very ancient phenomenon - Anomaly. Anomalies, as you know are funny things
that happen that shouldn't according to the "accepted" view of things. The
word comes from the Greek "anomos" - which literally means "without the Law"
- or we might say outlaws. A perfect example is Open Space. Everybody
"knows" that given a complex problem - sitting in a circle, creating a
bulletin board, opening a market place will produce only disaster. Strangely
(anomalously) it doesn't.

More often than not, anomalies are byproducts of self-organization. The
technical word is emergence. As the system adapts to its environment,
strange things happen - the system does something it had never done before.
Probably most of these things are not useful - but a few are marvelously
adaptive, and suddenly the system has a new capability to deal with some
issue. The conventional wisdom looks at the new capability and says - that
just couldn't happen. Tragically the conventional wisdom usually tries to
eliminate the innovation because it is not part of the Standard Procedure.
The Smart Money (and Henri and Lisa have a lot of that) says, WOW!

Instead of spending hours and days designing solutions for new problems
which usually won't work very well, The Smart Money lets the system do all
the heavy lifting (create the innovation) and then claims the credit and
advertizes the result. Now that is real smart - And pretty much what we do
all the time with Open Space - which everybody knows is the ultimate scam.
The client does all the work, creates the solutions, and even writes the
report. This is known as Thinking of one more thing not to do!

So Open Space is PD and vice versa. No problem.

Harrison

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

Phone 301-365-2093

www.openspaceworld.com

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Alan
Stewart
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 12:47 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: OST and PD (Positive Deviance)

Dear All

I am going to West Sumatra (different parts this time) in Indonesia next
week to continue the process of introducing OST to university lecturers and
students in the field of health care.

http://openspaceworld.ning.com/forum/topics/sewing-seeds-for-ost

One of my former PhD students and I will do this together. He will add his
considerable experience with PD which can be seen to be a complement to OST
in particular contexts. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Deviance and 
http://www.positivedeviance.org/about_pd/index.html 

Which means that not only will participants become aware of how to engage
with communities about their perceived needs for health services. They will
also come to appreciate that there may already be effective strategies in
place within communities on which to build, eg local initiatives in child
care that health care practitioners would not know of unless they looked out
for them. 

Further, how to encourage the invention of such strategies through
conversation, and story telling of successes elsewhere, about possibilities.

I wonder if anyone has had experience in using OST in conjunction with
Positive Deviance? 

Along with our friends Henri Lipmanowicz, Lisa Kimball and Joelle Lyons
Everett, all of whom were present at the wonderful WOSonOS in Marysville,
near Melbourne, in 2002. * And who are among the contributors to the new
book 'Inviting Everyone - Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance'. 

Looking forward

Go well

Alan 

* Sadly, as you may be aware, the lovely hotel which was our residential
venue and most of this country town were destroyed in a bush fire last year.

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